Book Review: The Graveyard Book

One of the best children's books in recent memory is so new that it's not out in paperback yet. I'm talking about Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which won this year's Newbery and Hugo Awards. I'd hate to pigeonhole this as children's literature, because this is a book for all ages, a full fledged novel of intense creativity. It has the same cross-generational appeal as the Harry Potter tomes. The Graveyard Book is a riff on Kipling's The Jungle Book, only here, instead of a young boy being raised by wolves in the jungle, the main character in The Graveyard Book is a toddler raised by ghosts in a graveyard. This is not a book for the squeamish; the first line of the novel sets the morbid tone: "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." The knife is used to kill an entire family . . . except a small child who stumbles out of the house and into the graveyard where he begins his life protected and nurtured by spirits. I could talk about this novel all day, because it's so fabulous, so alive with wonder and danger. As the author says in the novel's trailer (see below), "The Graveyard Book is a tale of friendship, family and how truly great it is to be alive." This might be the best book written this year.